Fear Me

18

C Block this time.

About 2:10 A.M. it started.

There was screaming, but not the screaming of one man but the screaming of two and within seconds after it had begun, like an infectious disease, it spread from con to con on C until they were all going out of their minds.

Bobby Parks pulled the duty.

He had at least ten years on the rest of the guards and when it started, he told them to stay at their stations, told them to get Sergeant Warres right goddamn now.

And then he was running, walkie-talkie in hand, calling for them to unlock doors as he made his way down to the end of C. The cons were out of their minds, hollering and yelling and clattering their bars and demanding to be let out. But Parks ignored them, went numb to all they said and did, concentrated on what was happening down at the end, must have been in cell #75 or #76, that general vicinity. He was hearing those screams that at first sounded like the inmates were being roasted over coals… gradually becoming something that human lungs were not capable of.

#75, all right.

Parks, big and pumped-up and more than a match for any of the trash that prison could throw at him, suddenly felt very small, very vulnerable, very afraid. He was thinking about Houle. About Jorgensen cracking up.

Man up, he told himself. Man up for chrissake. Do your job.

But those sounds… Jesus, he didn’t know what he was hearing.

A high-pitched screeching that was shrill and strident, piercing his eardrums, making his guts become cold, coiling snakes that twisted and mated, slithering up the back of his throat and filling his mouth. He wanted to turn back the other way, get away from that godawful racket that went right through him, made his molars ache and his marrow go to ice. The cons were all reaching out of their cells, demanding protection or sobbing and screaming, more than a few praying in broken voices.

The screeching was weird and sharp and echoing, had the tonal quality of buzzsaws tearing into planks. And there was a stink rising up, too, something flyblown and fermented and dirty.

Parks, his throat full of cinders and dry flaking things, got on his walkie-talkie as he neared #75. “It’s me,” he said dryly, breathlessly. “Open Seventy-Five…”

“Open it?” The guy on the other end couldn’t believe this.

“Do what I fucking said…”

Inside the cell, that screeching sound nearly drowned out the noise of things being slammed around, thrown against the bars. Wet sounds, ripping sounds, sounds like axes hacking into raw meat. Sounds Parks could not believe… the sound of something moving with moist undulations like snakes sliding out of swamps across wet leaves.

Parks edged in closer, clicked on his flashlight and saw—

He wasn’t sure what he saw, only that it made him take two fumbling steps back and that he nearly dropped his flashlight. He saw Heslip… he thought it might be Heslip… come slamming up against the bars and at such an amazing velocity, Parks almost screamed himself. Heslip slammed into those iron rungs like he’d been hit by a truck, propelled with such force you could hear his bones breaking with the impact. A mist of something warm and wet sprayed onto Parks, the lens of his flashlight was hit with clots of tissue that obscured the light, threw big black blobs into the beam.

And in that grim instant, before he was yanked away, Parks saw that Heslip was drenched red like somebody had dipped him in red ink and his body… broken and contorted, his face a bleeding husk, entirely fleshless like somebody had carved the meat away with a knife.

Then Heslip was yanked back and away.

Parks’ flashlight was jumping in his hand, the light creating leaping night-shapes and it was impossible to say what was happening in there. And although he didn’t know it, it had been less than ten seconds since he’d approached #75. But everything was pulled out like taffy, becoming nightmarish and surreal. All those cons raging in their chorus of dementia and Parks hearing slobbering, hungry sounds from inside the cell and the clattering resonation of things like teeth on bones and nails clicking and scraping. Crazy, insane shit. His bobbing flashlight was showing him blood and motion and anger, something slashing around in there, writhing and shrieking. A glistening, whipping helix of gas and flesh and pulsating ropes, pissing steam and gray jelly.

And then Parks heard something that slapped him back into reality: the clicking of the cell lock. The door began to slide back and Parks, crying out with everything he had into the walkie-talkie said, “Close that fucking door! Close that fucking door you goddamn asshole close it!”

The door stopped and began shutting now.

It had only made it maybe three feet, but it was enough. Enough for something to slink out, a mass of pink translucent tentacles like things that might belong to a jellyfish. They coiled out like blind worms, searching, feeling their way along and then Parks did scream. They got within three feet of his left boot and then the door closed on them, trapping them there and finally severing them in a spray of inky fluid that stank like rotting fish. In the cell, that abomination let go with a keening, reverberating squeal like a dozen teakettles whistling simultaneously. The severed tentacles looped obscenely like worms in direct sunlight and Parks dropped his light and was screaming into his walkie-talkie for them to turn on the lights, turn on the main fucking lights, and the cons all around him were bellowing out prayers to Jesus and Mother Mary and then those lights came on. Exploded with a brilliance that made Parks squeeze his eyes shut.

And the thing in there began wailing as if it had been doused with acid as the light found it. There was smoke and fog and a mist of blood and that thing shrieking with rage and hatred, then a grinding/groaning sound of metal ripping and bolts snapping off. By the time Parks could get a good look, he saw that whatever it was, was gone. It had peeled the cover off the radiator vent and slipped into the ventilation system.

Sergeant Warres was there then, wanting to know what in Christ was going on, what the hell had happened this time. But then he saw the slaughterhouse in #75, the bones and meat and blood and he turned away.

“What the hell was it?” he put to Parks.

And Parks just shook his head, eyes bulging and drool hanging from his mouth. “It… it was pissed off,” he managed.